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It's probably a WebDirect bug, there are still a number of formatting issues. Use a slide panel instead and script buttons to move between the slide panels. You can style this so it looks like a tab panel.

I've seen this happen from time to time. It seems to be intermittent happening when performance is low.
Have you made sure you saved all your custom styles to the theme?
Optimizing the layouts, tables and server seem to help.

I don't believe there is a good solution yet for styling radio- and checklists in WebDirect.
What most people do is build similar functioning layout elements. The simplest way, if the options don't change, is to use text labels and single radio buttons sized to only show the radio button itself. That can sort of mimic radio buttons. But it's still hard to get the radio's looking ok on all platforms. Ditching the radio's all together and using only button elements is probably an even better option. If it needs to be dynamic you'll probably want to use portals and buttons.

Maybe you haven't set the fmreauthenticate extended privilege set? Here is some info on it: http://www.portagebay.com/blog/2017/2/1/fmreauthenticate-refresher
But that's probably not the problem; there is a bug/incompatibility in Safari on iOS that causes this.
Some more info here: https://community.filemaker.com/message/596560#596560
Tbh it looks like if you can't change the browser you can't do much but wait and see if FM16 or an iOS update fixes it.

Well you do shift the main outwards facing login from the VPN to WebDirect. I can imagine the IT department not liking to lose control. How safe your DB is then shifted to how safe you make your solution on FileMaker Server. Still if you secure it well, you should be fine.
A couple of basic things to keep in mind:
1. Disable the FileMaker Server resources that you don't actively use: XML, ODBC and PHP api.
2. Use External Authentication to let the IT department be the administrator of the user accounts.
3. Be sure to remove all files without good account security ie. sample files or files with open guest access. Don't list open files without login.

I wouldn't upgrade just for the top calls stats. It helps but in most cases it won't be a magic bullet telling you exactly where a problem might be. It will give you some more clues about which tables, action or field are part of issue though. But that can always be misleading and part of secondary action.
However FMS15 is pretty good overall, i haven't seen or read many issues at all and it has fixed a lot bugs and issues. Other than the license changes it's probably one of the least problematic version upgrades in recent FM history.

No people can always close the browser...
What you can do is to flag records as incomplete until they finish your process or have them input into global fields only to create a record when you have all the data.

Well tbh that hasn't been supported for a while now. It might be time to accept that and use a dedicated FileMaker Server.
I have stopped doing this and tbh it was kind of an unstable setup, every update or installation could break it. To set it up you have to do a certain order of editing vhosts, opening ports and restarting the machine/apache/FMS...

Ah just to chime in: I've seen this happen too. I often have multiple different VPNs connected at different times during the day. And also connections to multiple FM servers. It usually happens after connecting to 1 or 2 servers via VPN and then trying to connect to a different server via the recent dropdown. It seems FileMaker becomes a little confused and tries a wrong connection. It's kinda like it's trying to "shortcut" open via something equivalent to "file:filename.fmp12" on the current server instead of the full fmnet: ip. However a second try will work instantly. It doesn't happen often and it's barely a nuisance so i haven't even reported it to FIleMaker, but maybe we should? (also i'd guess it's probably an FMP(A) issue instead of FMS)

Crashing that often sounds more like a configuration conflict. OSX can do strange stuff without telling you, especially with the server.app. It sometimes tries to "fix" itself and will overwrite settings, configs or hooks made by FileMaker. Have you tried a fresh install of OS X and FileMaker Server (using the recommended steps)? There IS a pretty serious webdirect bug that causes the login screen to not appear, but that seems like something different to me.

Depends if you want to have FileMaker or WebDirect available for users outside of the firewall. Port-forwarding 80 and 443 is not necessary if you don't.
If you do need FileMaker Pro but no WebDirect you could suffice without 80 or 443 and only forward 5003. However this could interfere with container downloading.
In most cases using a VPN for outside access is preferred though. In that case you wouldn't need to forward any ports.

Yes i agree with what you are saying. WebDirect IS clunky and inefficient. I do not think a really good CRM could be build with WebDirect.
Modern web technology is so much faster and smoother that the expected experience wouldn't match the experience with WebDirect.
That is not saying a lot can't be done with WebDirect. It's just that yes you have to tailor your layouts for WebDirect. As you say small numbers of fields and simple layouts. I currently treat it like a touch layout, building on a touch theme and using few but big fields and buttons. Dropdowns seem to have issues so replace them with radios or portals in popovers. Sometimes weird stuff happens and objects that should be the same style render differently. Testing and copy-pasting objects that do render properly and customizing the copy further is a workaround for that...

It might feel that way but that is nigh on impossible. The result would be just be a crappy prototype or proof of concept.
Building a proper commercial SAAS app with a decent architecture will cost closer to $200,000. And if you want to keep your app up-to-date and relevant it will continue to need support and development. It doesn't just stop at development.
Practically you'll need at least one FTE and preferably 2 just for development. And don't forget right now you are probably the lead developer, but can you really fulfill that role in a native web environment?
It still the same case as it always was, the speed and simplicity of FileMaker development is still light years ahead of native web. Changes, development, support and new prototyping new features are still much slower with native web. The big advantage of web is scalability. If you want to create a app that could be used by thousands of companies then going for web is a good choice. But it'll also be a big investment.

Yep a total restart is usually the best option. Just restarting the FileMaker Server seems to result in a less stable server causing quicker crashes, but then again that could just be confirmation bias.
To be honest though we've been coming to the conclusion that FileMaker Server 13 on Mac OS X has too many issues and should preferably not be used. The Windows version has fewer issues and is much stabler. Ofcourse there is not always a choice..

This is a pretty big "known" and unresolved issue with FMS on OS X...
There are multiple threads on the FileMaker support forum with this same issue:
http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/8adabe24db
http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/d3853db796
by the way You have even replied in some of them yourself and in this thread: https://fmdev.filemaker.com/message/158031
I don't think there is any news about it yet.